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| Health policy experts call for confronting anti-vaccine activism with life-saving counter narratives |
| In The Lancet, health experts demand immediate public outreach to save lives |
| WPCNR CORONAVIRUS SURVEILLANCE, FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, RIVERSIDE. March 3, 2023: Public and private sector health officials and public policymakers should team up immediately with community leaders to more effectively disseminate accurate narratives regarding the life-saving benefits of vaccines to counter widespread, harmful misinformation from anti-vaccine activists. Such is the message of a UC Riverside-led Viewpoint piece published Thursday, March 2, in the leading international medical journal, The Lancet. “We need to consistently amplify the best science and find the best ways of communicating so that people are hearing it through multiple channels instead of through one or two sources,” said Richard M. Carpiano, lead author on the paper and a public policy professor at UCR. “This is a matter of life and death. People don’t always see it that way,” he added. “We’ve forgotten how many people have died, have been sick, or continue to get sick from COVID-19 as well as many other vaccine-preventable diseases.” The paper comes out just after California marked the grim milestone of more than 100,000 COVID-19 deaths. Nationally, more than 1.1 million people have died, and the worldwide toll is estimated at 6.8 million. The disease continues to spread as vaccines have been found to greatly reduce illnesses that require hospitalization or result in death. Carpiano and 20 leading public health experts describe in The Lancet paper a perfect storm that still allows anti-vaccine activism, once a fringe subculture, to become a well-organized form of right-wing identity with narratives that associate refusing vaccines with personal liberty. This narrative was consistently repeated and amplified by social media influencers, pro-Donald Trump political operatives, and right-wing blogs, podcasts, and other media as the COVID-19 pandemic spread worldwide.(Click here for more information) |